Exclusive: Home Affairs tells the Guardian consular assistance is ‘severely limited’ in Syria, where Mustafa Hajj-Obeid remains in custody. The Australian government should repatriate, monitor and investigate any crimes committed by a member of Islamic State who was wounded in the extremist group’s final battle, according to multiple security and international law experts.
Last week, the Guardian revealed an Australian man whose fate was not publicly known was alive and in custody in a prison in north-eastern Syria, run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Mustafa Hajj-Obeid, 41, who is one of a cohort of accused IS members whose Australian citizenship was stripped and then restored in 2022 after a legal challenge, has been reported as missing for the past six years since the military defeat of IS.
The Australian government has acknowledged the Guardian’s reporting on Hajj-Obeid’s detainment and said it was “closely monitoring the security situation in Syria”. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email. “The Australian government’s ability to provide consular assistance to those in Syria is severely limited, due to the extremely dangerous security situation and because we do not have an embassy or consulate in Syria,” a government spokesperson said.
Despite this, the former director of two Australian intelligence agencies and founder of the Strategic Analysis Australia thinktank, Michael Shoebridge, said the federal government should seek to negotiate Hajj-Obeid’s return to Australia. “Australians who are in refugee camps or Syrian prisons remain the responsibility of the Australian government and they should be brought back to Australia,” Shoebridge said. “We have the resources and means to manage them far better than the countries they are in.”.
Dr John Coyne, who leads the national security programs at the defence supported Australian Strategic Policy Institute, also said Australia had “an obligation to repatriate its citizens, especially when they have been involved in terrorism related offences”.
“Moreover, he should be held to account for his alleged support of IS,” Coyne said. “While he has served six years of incarceration and apparently denounced IS, the fact remains he has not been tried in an Australian court for his alleged offences.
“Australia operates one of the most effective post sentence terrorism offender monitoring systems. The same cannot be said for Syria.”. When encountered by the Guardian during a rare tour of Panorama prison, Hajj-Obeid admitted to having been an IS member but said he had deeply regretted his actions.
“I’ve been here for six years and it’s been traumatising,” he said, the cell floor behind him lined with thin, grey sleeping mats and what appeared to be plastic children’s cutlery. “Many people died, it’s been overwhelming.”. The Australian Centre for International Justice’s acting executive director, Lara Khider, said: “Australia is obligated to investigate any allegations of international crimes committed by this Australian citizen”.
Shoebridge conceded the political appetite for repatriation to Australia was nonexistent, despite national security advantages. He said this was increasingly so, given the fracturing of social cohesion caused by the Israel-Gaza conflict. “There is no political will to bring him or other Australians citizens back because we would prefer that distant problems remain distant. But we are not thinking through the consequences,” Shoebridge said.
“Having very troubled people with an increasing sense of grievance against their home country and government by being left in atrocious conditions … is a driver of exactly the kind of extremism that created IS.”. Dr Andrew Zammit, an expert in foreign fighters and a research fellow at Victoria University, said leaving foreign fighters in Syria presented a national security challenge given the region’s uncertain future.
“It’s ultimately Australia’s responsibility to bring the Australians to justice, not the SDF’s responsibility, particularly when the SDF’s future is so unclear following Assad’s overthrow.”. Hajj-Obeid said he left Australia in 2015, claiming he was motivated to travel to Syria “to help”. “It was the situation in Syria, Bashar [al-Assad, the former Syrian president], the killing, the drama,” he said.
The Australian government stripped Hajj-Obeid of his nationality in 2019, claiming he was eligible for Lebanese citizenship, but was forced to reverse the decision after a successful high court challenge by another man detained in Syria for his connections to IS.
